Show us the money: United find plenty of ways to score

Transport Reporter

The name Manchester United means David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, and 20 English league championships. It means George Best, three European Cups, the Theatre of Dreams football stadium and 659 million fans worldwide.

And it means an awful lot of wealth flowing through the Cayman Islands.

When Sydney's United fans, as well as other football tragics and enthusiasts, chip in $15 each to attend a training session at the SCG on Friday night they will be contributing, in a small way, to an economic and sporting entity that in size and scope dwarfs all those in Australia.

Man Utd game showcases A-League

By and large, Australian sporting teams, for a nation whose major codes tend to gravitate close to home, measure up pretty well with the big teams around the world. On some numbers, AFL clubs such as Collingwood would rank in the top 20 global clubs by value if they played the round-ball game.

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But United are in a different league altogether.

In Forbes' recent ranking of most valuable football clubs, United actually fell down the list, losing top spot for the first time since 2004 to Spanish side Real Madrid. But Forbes still put a valuation of $3.44 billion on United, and that valuation has more than doubled in the past eight years. (One could, pretty much, fund one year of the ACT government if that value was cashed in.)

Kicking goals off the field: Manchester United is one of the most valuable sporting teams in the world. Photo: Getty Images

And the fact that United are training in Sydney on Friday and playing a selection of A-League All Stars on Saturday is both cause and symptom of this dramatic increase in wealth.

United's most recent annual report - the club is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and domiciled in the Cayman Islands - documents the global growth of the brand and business.

The report shows how an ever-smaller share of United's wealth is generated from the traditional stuff of football teams, and how an ever-greater proportion is assisted by the type of marketing jaunts through Australia and Asia that the club is on at present.

(The Red Devils are not alone in this, of course. Their rivals Liverpool play Melbourne Victory at the MCG next week, and Arsenal are now in Vietnam.)

Between 2010 and last year, for instance, United's match-day revenue, the money they make from selling tickets to home games, actually dropped from $175 million to $163 million. But commercial revenue, including the money the club makes from sponsorship, merchandise and marketing, rose from $128 million to $195 million.

Within that figure, the club increased the amount it made just from selling mobile phone subscriptions in 44 countries around the world, many of which are in Asia, from $14 million to almost $32 million.

By itself, then, United's fast-growing mobile phone revenue stream almost makes up half the money Australia's largest sporting team, Collingwood, brings through the door every year. Collingwood, with revenue of $69 million last year, have emerged on top the last two times copyright lawyer Wayne Covell has attempted to quantify the brand value of Australian sporting teams.

In 2011 Covell put a value of $344 million on Collingwood. On Forbes' list this year that would place the AFL club between Napoli and Corinthians as the 17th most valuable team in the world - if it switched to soccer.

''If you look at Collingwood Magpies, the Geelong Cats, Essendon Bombers … that puts you in the top tier of soccer clubs,'' Mr Covell said. ''Which is incredible. The AFL in terms of what they've done with valuations is amazing.''

The most valuable NRL side, according to Mr Covell, is the St George Illawarra Dragons at $183 million.

But while top Australian sporting sides try to win fans off each other, and break into new domestic markets, they are not attempting to mix it overseas with the likes of the touring United, said John Tripodi, chief executive of sports marketing consultancy Twenty3 Group and adjunct professor of marketing at RMIT University.

''Our battleground is the territory of Australia, whereas these other larger leagues, it is more so from an international perspective,'' Mr Tripodi said.

Which is why Australian fans, snug in Asia's lucrative television time zone, are likely to see more and more top European teams on their pre-season travels. And NSW taxpayers, as they are being asked to do to the tune of a reported $3 million in United's case, will help make that happen.